Workshop 2: Making Writing Meaningful

Gloria Hamilton's Lesson

Gloria Hamilton's eighth-graders write a response to a question in the style of an advice columnist.

Veteran teacher
Gloria Hamilton was inspired by Dear Abby and some of her students' "I've
got all the answers" bravado to develop an engaging, month-long activity
that gets her eighth-grade students writing every day. It's called "Dear
Know-It-All."

There's a box in Gloria's room where students leave anonymous
questions for "Dear Know-It-All." Each morning, Gloria pulls
a question from the box and writes it on the board, and all day, each
class responds to the question in the form of a letter. Gloria gives
the class between five and eight minutes to respond to the question,
and then two or three students volunteer to share their advice. Gloria
records those solutions on the board, and very
often the class discussion of the solutions leads into the day's lesson.

Gloria finds the "Dear Know-It-All" activity is effective
on many levels—it's engaging because it taps into the social
nature of teenagers and involves issues important to them; it challenges
her students to think of mature solutions to problems facing their peers
and offers them a chance to help a classmate; and it gives them a chance
to write, first thing, every day, in a non-threatening, informal style.